Episode 1 - What If by Paula Cordeiro

What if...

I’d start writing for Sasak Market and put my heart to the test, do what I love the most, and hope for the best?

Thank you.

What if is a place for questioning, to propose ideas, and foster my concerns. It is also the place I was aiming for, to express myself and share a sustainable life.

Sasak is all about sustainability and we crossed each other's lives at the right moment. I'm in it for the love, Sasak grows from love. Together, I hope to contribute to raising awareness of our impact in the Planet while helping this amazing project that transforms some people's lives, because I too believe in a better world.

It all started whit a group of friends traveling and deciding to do their best to help an artisans community facing scarcity during the COVID quarantine earlier this year. I'm a huge detractor of social media but I must recognize that in this case, social media brought us together and helped me find this amazing project that mesmerized me at first sight.

Here I am, somehow part of the team, writing about what I love the most: a toxic-free, conscious life, asking questions to allow myself to consider beliefs and disbeliefs. 

To start this column, what if we just degrowth?...

I believe that's what Sasak means, as sa'-saq means "the one" and Sasak people mainly live from agriculture, fishing, and crafts. I set myself on a going back to roots process a couple of years ago that started taking place last year.

By following an idea of degrowth, I started questioning the global capitalist system and environmental destruction, implementing some small steps to simplify my personal life: decluttering, buying less, and, in a Kondo approach to life, asking myself the value and the joy of each item I already owned and the ones I might buy. If growing more and more doesn't bring us happiness, it's time for degrowth, rooting back to basics.

I moved from the city center to a village and a smaller home managing to have affordable rent that would allow me to work less, have more free time, and be able to look after my daughter, lunching at home daily.

I exchanged my car for a smaller, eco-friendly one and started walking for grocery shopping and running errands. Easy peasy, right? The biggest and hard change was waste... I'm committed to less-waste life and started making some huge changes at home. The first one?

The waste bin for plastic and recyclable waste, changing a 42 l for a 10 l which makes it unbearable to deal unless you stop bringing plastic and other disposables home, and that was exactly what started happening:

• fruits and vegetables using my cotton bags;
• bulk home detergents and soaps; solid shampoo and body care;
• bulk cereals, coffee, tea, spices, cookies, and grains;
• shopping at the local market using my containers.

It's a huge change, somehow hard to imagine but easy to implement leaving you with a feeling of accomplishment because, believe me, recycling is no longer the solution and the world needs to stop pursuing infinite growth through an ever stopping consumption life which leads me back to start: what if we could make a change?

Stay posted, share with your friends if you care, and join our family by subscribing to our newsletter.

I'll be back soon ❤️

By: Paula Cordeiro